In an interesting update, our friends from Chicago have updated the requirements for managing trash (heretofore identified as: The hospital has procedures for the proper routine storage and prompt disposal of trash) to widen the scope a wee bit to requiring hospitals to have procedures for the...
Ensuring you have competent physicians who are providing high-quality care is essential to the success of any healthcare organization. To evaluate physician care, hospitals and medical staffs have spent years developing their peer review processes. CMS and other major accreditors all require...
CMS officials are calling for more federal oversight of accrediting organizations (AO) due to unhappiness with patient safety mistakes they learn about from the news media and with problems identified by CMS surveyors but seemingly missed by AOs.
Training and education in any professional role can help individuals improve their skills and learning competencies. Training and education opportunities, however, often get sidelined by day-to-day duties and lost in performance reviews. That should not be the case, and certainly when it comes...
CMS’ State Operations Manual, Appendix A, offers interpretive guidelines for its own state surveyors and generally has been held as the guide for all the accrediting bodies. It outlines the tasks that accompany the survey process for hospitals, from off-site survey preparation to post-...
As CMS begins focusing more on emergency preparedness planning, review your hospital’s plans to ensure they include how the facility will handle a patient surge during civic unrest. Preparation for civic unrest unfortunately must be a part of any medical facility’s emergency planning, say...
You can never be too reliable, especially when you work in biosafety and handle hazardous chemicals all day. Becoming a high reliability organization (HRO) has been a goal of many hospitals and laboratories in recent years, but even those who achieve that status have to work to maintain it, says...
According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the demand for registered nurses (RN) will increase on average by 193,100 annually. This demand will stretch over all aspects of nursing, from hospitals and outpatient care centers to rehabilitation facilities, surgery centers, and residential...
While most of the time your Emergency Power Supply System (EPSS) stands by to provide coverage in the event of a power outage/disruption, as most of you know, it takes a lot of care and feeding (so to speak) to ensure that your EPSS is ready to go to work at a moment’s notice—or less. There is...
